Sunday, April 28, 2013

TEN minutes now I have been looking
at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of
the world, and feeding people instead of butchering
them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag
in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men
all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

The unprecedented level of economic inequality in America is
undeniable. In an extended essay, Bill shares examples of the striking
extremes of wealth and poverty across the country, including a video
report on California’s Silicon Valley. There, Facebook, Google, and
Apple are minting millionaires, while the area’s homeless — who’ve grown
20 percent in the last two years — are living in tent cities at their
virtual doorsteps.
“A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant
politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government,” says Bill,
“while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has
turned us into the United States of Inequality.”

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Today is Gustav Vigeland's birthday!Gustav Vigeland (11 April 1869 – 12 March 1943) was a Norwegian sculptor who occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors,
both in the power of his creative imagination and productivity.
He is most associated with the Vigeland Sculpture Arrangement in Frogner Park, Oslo and was also the designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal.

Astonishing human figures in the park. Last summer in a rainy day in Oslo!

Ken Butigan: "Guernica calls us to continue this resistance to death from above — including by building the anti-drone movement
— and to all the relentless forms of death at ground level. And this
will depend, in part, on more conversations about nonviolence."

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Monir Vakili's lullaby.
A reproduction of the original "Chants Et Danses De Perse". A stunning
collection from Monir Vakili, Iran's First Lady Of Opera. With the help
of modern technology, Monir Vakili's daughter ZaZa and grandchildren,
Arian Saleh and Alexandra Monir come together in this exotic and
nostalgic journey into the folklore of Persia.